WAYNE EARNED THAT FI­NAL CAP

I WAS capped by my coun­try at both U17 and U18 level. To achieve that hon­our, I had to do what many se­nior play­ers have talked about re­cent­prove ly - I had to my­self as be­ing bet­ter at the time than many other very good play­ers. In my case, I played along­side fu­ture full in­ter­na­tion­als like Michael Thomas and Tony Da­ley, while great lads like Paul Mer­son and Paul Ince missed out on se­lec­tion. I only got in ahead of those top play­ers by train­ing well, play­ing well, scor­ing goals and fight­ing my hard­est. And my char­ac­ter within the squad was tested be­fore I was awarded my caps. No, these were not full in­ter­na­tional caps. But I com­pletely un­der­stand what it takes to earn in­ter­na­tional caps at a cer­tain level. With that cre­den­tial es­tab­lished, I want to say that Wayne Rooney ab­so­lutely earned the right to be awarded one more cap. As a 119-cap player, and our record goalscorer of all-time, there is no­body who has done more to EARN the op­por­tu­nity to be hon­oured with one fur­ther cap – a full stop on a great in­ter­na­tional ca­reer. Any­body who ar­gues against that, in my opin­ion, is com­pletely miss­ing the point.

PIC­TURE: PA Im­ages

LAST HUR­RAH: Eng­land’s Wayne Rooney at­tempts a shot on goal against the USA